Friday, June 18, 2010

Smart Beats Vol. 1 - X-Sight 73016-2

Next up we have an obscure U.S. jungle compilation from the year when jungle was writhing under the excruciating agony of minimal, techy drum n bass: 1997. Despite the unfortunate year of its release, this is, to draw from its title, a rather "smart" collection of tunes from U.S. producers, most of which (perhaps all) resided in New York. There is a bit of the blechy influence on the tunes from High Jinx, Money Grip, Toxic 220 and Tom Grim/Gruv 42, but the three artists that most listeners are probably familiar with --Odi, Datcyde and Soul Slinger-- are clearly at the top of their game here, and the first two take us not only out of the garbage, but into some of best examples of amen-oriented, monster-bass tunes ever to come out of the Stars and Stripes. In particular, Odi and Datcyde are trading punch for punch, and following the bout, I'd be hard pressed to declare a clear winner. After the heavy hitting, Soul Slinger slows it down with some outerdelic trip-hop a la DJ Wally. Most of the unknown guys don't appear to have done much; Toxic 220 has a single release on the Sugar Spliff label, and Gruv 42 has a few trance/breaks releases for the label Don't Panic, but other than that I don't find any mention of them on discogs. Whatever the case, it makes me wonder what else the New York Dons did in this vein that never saw the dark of vinyl, and prompts me to add my list of mixes to make an Odi vs Datcyde mix, and just like this, that's gonna be one tough cookie to crumble.